I know that there's an obvious solution to this, so it probably doesn't warrant whining about, but I will do so anyway. I have made two new best friends at my university, both of which are female. I came out as bi to one of them very early in our friendship, because we were at a bar and I was drunk. The other friend was with us at the bar, but she had gone to restroom. I didn't intentionally exclude her from this coming out, since I hadn't planned it, but I still haven't come out to her. And I haven't tried to deceive her, but society being what it is if you mention that you've had boyfriends or are attracted to men, people will automatically assume that you're straight instead of entertaining the possibility that you are attracted to women in addition to men.

I can't figure out how to tell her. And at this point we've gone out alone together to eat or see movies or get drinks, so I don't want her to think that I'm interested in her in a romantic way. I hate this because it makes me feel like I've lied to her, even though she's the one who's made the assumption, one which is perfectly normal to make.

Well if it's bothering you, tell her that you don't think it's terribly important to discuss but that it's bothering you so you're just going to mention it for that reason. Setting it up like that will make it a bit more of a framed statement and more weighty, but if it were going to come up naturally it likely already would have. Also you have no way of knowing if she'll feel it should have been important enough for you to bring up if you go that route, too.

My suggestion, which as usual is probably said than done, is to pretty much explain it to her as you did here. It doesn't seem to me that you've done anything wrong, so I'd hope your friend would understand.

Alternatively, if you're more of a fan of probably-benign deception, you could try to rope your truth-knowing friend into feigning ignorance, then have a little coming out thing for the both of them, eliminating the "oh poopcakes is she coming on to me?" factor. Unless you end up coming across as doubly seedy, that is.

This is all assuming the only problem is that you told one and not the other, of course. If the prospect t of coming out sober is intimidating in general (which it imagine it probably is), I can't even pretend to have useful advice.

I'm not very good at coming out to people. Firstly, I didn't realize that it's something you have to do over and over again. Secondly, to use an illustrative example, about two years ago I visited my hometown of a weekend with the express purpose of coming out to my mom. Once there she and I were getting ready to go somewhere and she was deciding which shoes to wear. She jokingly referred to a pair of comfortable but unattractive loafers as her "lesbian shoes." In my mind I thought, "Is this the moment? Is that a good segue? No, probably not."

jvcc wrote:I'm not very good at coming out to people. Firstly, I didn't realize that it's something you have to do over and over again. Secondly, to use an illustrative example, about two years ago I visited my hometown of a weekend with the express purpose of coming out to my mom. Once there she and I were getting ready to go somewhere and she was deciding which shoes to wear. She jokingly referred to a pair of comfortable but unattractive loafers as her "lesbian shoes." In my mind I thought, "Is this the moment? Is that a good segue? No, probably not."

You should have wordlessly put on one of the loafers. But only one. Maintaining intense eye contact throughout.

If only it were a marketable skill. Or I had anything to come out about.

"Guys, there's something I've been wanting to talk about for a long time. There's no easy way to say this, so I'm just going to come out with it: I'm... quite a lazy person. You might not be able to accept that about me, but it's who I am. I hope we can still be friends."

Firstly, high five jvcc for probably annoying your friends and family as much as I do mine.

Secondly, just by coincidence I was reminded a day or two ago of a comedy sketch (which I thought was from Kids in the Hall, but was apparently from something called The Downer Channel):

Scene: The son walks in to a living room set, sees his parents sitting down reading.

Son: Mom, Dad, I have something to tell you.(They put down their reading materials)Son: You said no matter what I do, you'll always love me, right?Mom: Right. What's on your mind?Son: Mom, you'd better sit down. Here, have some tissues.

The son walks over to the stereo and turns on some melodramatic violin music.

Son (talking over the music): You said no matter what I do, you'll still support my decisions, right?Mom: Right. (Uneasy) Why? What's wrong?Son: Mom, Dad... (turns up the music) I'M MELODRAMATIC!Mom screams and buries her face in her hands.Dad looks as if his son came out of the closet. He picks up a lamp and smashes it.Son poses dramatically showing all his mental anguish. The music is overpoweringly dramatic.Son: Mom, stop. This is who I am. Maybe deep down on the inside, you're melodramatic too!Dad: Noooooo!Mom: Never!

The son gets up and walks out. The father yells as he leaves "Why can't you just be gay?!"Son: "Because the ladies love it, Dad! I love the ladies!"

I would have linked a Youtube video if one existed. If it helps, just imagine the Kids performing it.

jvcc wrote:I can't figure out how to tell her. And at this point we've gone out alone together to eat or see movies or get drinks, so I don't want her to think that I'm interested in her in a romantic way. I hate this because it makes me feel like I've lied to her, even though she's the one who's made the assumption, one which is perfectly normal to make.

I usually just let things run their course and it somehow just ends up being known by friends of mine. Usually having made out with a girl in their vicinity gave them a clue. Once I had someone give me the "oh poopcakes, now what?" look, but I just told her I am the same person she's known and I didn't become friends with her because of any other reason than we became friends natuarally, and she was fine with that. I'd say the truth would be best. I wish I had better advice.And yes folks, I still do have a long-term, live-in boyfriend.

I'm not very proactive about making out with women. Also, all the women attracted to women that I know are in relationships. Except one who I think has a crush on me, but I'm not attracted to her and don't want to lead her on.

I think I'll set a deadline for coming out to my friend. That might work.

Not far from my house there is a reasonably busy road that comes off from a dual carriageway and leads into a residential area. As you drive away from the dual carriageway, on your left there is a junction leading to a pub and a McDonald's and just a little further along there is a roundabout. Since there's a supermarket with a petrol station on this roundabout, it can get reasonably busy there at certain times of day. Quite often, cars that have been to McDonald's or the pub have cause to get back onto the dual carriageway. Sensible drivers turn left and use the roundabout to turn around and head that way. When it's busy, this is a relatively quick way to get out. Less sensible drivers try to turn right, meaning that they have to get past a fairly steady stream of traffic coming from their right and join a fairly steady stream of traffic coming from the roundabout.

It's not particularly uncommon to come across the latter sort of driver. I suppose that if you don't know the area it might not immediately occur to you to go the other way, even if the roundabout really is not very far away from the junction at all. Today, on my way home, I was driving along the road as I normally do and join the small queue for the roundabout. As I'm slowing down, a man driving a white van, who appears to have been sitting waiting for a gap for some time, charges out in front of me. He is, at this point, completely obstructing one side of the road while he waits for a gap in the other side. Initially, he only came about three quarters of the way across me and stopped, so I made a sort of concessionary gesture to indicate that I was going to allow him to proceed along his course, as is standard when you let somebody out. At this point he then got out of his van, abandoning it in the road, and then started screaming 'WHAT IS IT' and 'SHUT YOUR MOUTH' over and over again in no particular order. He said the former more than the latter, I think.

This baffling array of shouting was met with my blankest expression and with me apparently being unwilling or unable to provide him with any kind of interesting response, he then got back into his van and swerved haphazardly into the steam of traffic, narrowly evading other vehicles. Throughout much of this period, a woman in the passenger seat was emitting an incredibly loud, surprisingly high pitched whine about something that was would probably confuse the world's foremost linguistics experts.

I'm not particularly whining or complaining about this. I'm just recounting it because he seems such a peculiar individual, really. I described him to somebody else as a 'simpleton', because it seemed fitting and I rather like that word. Maybe this is more common elsewhere. I was in New York for less than a week and saw an awful lot of people getting out of cars to punch each other. I can't say I've ever seen anything quite like this here before, though.

one of my biggest pet peeves are drivers who feel like they should choose the difficult exit (like your van driver) rather than take an extra 10 seconds to ponder if there is possibly an easier way to do things. for all the time that man sat waiting for the perfect opportunity, he probably could have made several laps around the roundabout and *still* taken less time to get out than the way he did it. growing up in austin, texas, these drivers are everywhere and even to this day i can't stand driving there when i go back to visit. my two favorite moves are the one you described, where someone sits and waits and waits and waits and waits for their opportunity to turn against traffic. and the other is the driver who, despite the fact that i am the only person on the road, decides they MUST be in front of me to turn again half a block later, rather than wait the 10 seconds to let me pass first. and as the drivers of southern california have a reputation for craziness, i'd still rather drive in LA gridlock than austin. at least the LA drivers somewhat work together to get somewhere. in austin, i don't think the drivers can see beyond the end of their bumpers.

actually, i'd say my biggest pet peeve is people's general lack of critical thinking skills especially when it comes to driving, but i know i can't expect everyone to be able to put two and two together and come up with four on a regular basis

ntw3001 wrote:Sass has to come from the heart, not from the shirt.

traubster wrote:I find it irritating whenever I walk through a cemetery and there's not one gravestone that reads something like, "We're all grateful that he's dead. Sorry if he owed you money."

I feel like the worst driving is in medium sized cities, to be honest. I have never lived in New York City, but I get the feeling that it self-polices against the worst kind of driving because, as you mentioned, the population density is high enough that no matter where you are, you're always within punching distance of someone if your driving happens to offend them.

Compare that to, say, the not-quite-suburbs of New Haven which feature absolute abominable driving just because people can get away with it.

So I'm about here, in the right-hand lane, indicating left. About where that blue car is.Then some chap (who's probably had a rough day, poor soul) decides to undertake me, at about 90mph, juuust as I start to move across lanes. Right as a car is merging from that road on the left. The usual thing is for people to get into the right lane and let other cars in, but due to the traffic in which all this is taking place this guy takes the 'brake like a man who narrowly escaped a crash five seconds ago and might go ahead and have one now anyway' option. Everything is resolved safely and I avoid making eye contact as I pull up next to him at the lights a couple of hundred yards ahead. I sort of slightly wish I'd gone ahead and run him off the road, but the not-deliberately-initiating-car-crashes part of my brain kicked in (it's a large part).

Four or five years ago I was on a dual carriageway when a man attempted to join from the slip road on the left. It's a pretty long slip road so if you're on it, you have a lot of time to pick your gap and get up to speed. If there's a car coming, the done thing is generally to slow down and slot in behind, or speed up and go on ahead. In this particular instance, had I been attempting to join then I probably would have slowed down and slotted in behind. The guy attempting to merge from the left did, in fact, speed up so that he was level with me and then kept pace with me perfectly. Perfectly. I'd have pulled out into the right hand lane to let him in, but I'd got two very fast moving cars coming up behind me. This was also in my first six months since I'd passed my test, so I was a touch nervous. The man continued to keep pace with me right up until he ran out of slip road, at which point he decided he would join the road anyway. I had absolutely no room to manoeuvre on the right but he forced me over anyway, causing me to narrowly miss being taken out by a Mercedes going at about 80 mph. I sort of ended up straddling both lanes while the man worked himself into a righteous fury. I can't quite remember how the whole thing resolved itself, but there was no accident and everyone went on unharmed. It was just an unnecessarily dangerous situation.

I think there is a general tendency for people to get in their car, manoeuvre themselves onto the road and then switch their brains off.

I bought a nature documentary series a while ago, and started watching it today. It wasn't David Attenborough. And not only was it not David Attenborough, it was about humans! I had only conceded to buy a documentary about *spit* humans on the understanding that it would feature, or at least be narrated by, David Attenborough. But now I've got all these DVDs of some common man talking about people and their stuff. It left a bitter taste.

With it being summer and everything I was looking forward to hanging out with my best friend, who lives about 45 minutes away, more often. We did get to spend some time together over the past few weeks, but he's started one summer undergrad class now and has no time to talk to hang out. What bugs me is that on three separate occasions he told me he'd call me later that day, and then didn't. Twice he apologized, but the third time I guess he just forgot.

I can't help but compare how he's acting now with how I acted during the last semester, when I was taking three graduate courses, teaching an undergrad class, and writing my thesis. I still had time to talk to him and I don't think that I neglected our friendship. So I'm upset with him, but I don't know if I should bring it up. He is just trying to do well in college, and I guess school might be harder for him than it is for me. But even so, I can't help but be hurt by this.

Page 81 of the Random Thoughts thread keeps getting stuck and not letting me scroll down. It could just be that I have an older version of IE. Oh well, everything else seems to work fine (except my "n" key sticks ).